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102688
Tue, 01/26/2010 - 15:07
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Ulaanbaatar, /MONTSAME/
From foreign press

A woman who was taking an art class at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art has accidentally fallen into a Picasso painting and damaged it.
The painting called The Actor sustained a vertical tear of about six inches (15cm) in the lower right-hand corner. But the damage did not affect the "focal point of the composition" and should be repaired for an exhibition later this year, the museum said.
The work from the Rose period was painted in the winter of 1904-1905.
The repair should be completed in time for the Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition, which will feature some 250 works from the museum's collection and is due to open at the end of April.
The unusually large canvas, measuring 6ft by 4ft (1.8m by 1.2m) and which depicts an acrobat posed against an abstracted backdrop, was damaged on Friday.

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A Sudanese man hurled his shoe at President Omar al-Beshir on Monday but missed him, witnesses said, adding that the assailant was immediately arrested.
The man, who was not identified but appears to be in his 50s, threw the shoe at Beshir in a hallway of the Friendship Hall, where the president hosts guests, witnesses said on condition of anonymity.
Security men detained the shoe thrower immediately, they said. It was not immediately clear why he had attacked the president.
Beshir has ruled Sudan since seizing power in a military coup in 1989 and he is standing for re-election in April, when Sudan holds its first general election in 24 years, AFP reports.
In Arab culture, it is rude even to show the sole of your shoe to a colleague and shoes are left at the door of mosques.
Former U.S. President George W.Bush was subjected to the same insult in Iraq in 2008 when an Iraqi journalist threw both his shoes at him.
"The man was close to the podium and threw the shoe but it didn't reach him," said one eye witness, saying the incident appeared to shock the dozens of officials gathered for the conference on strategic planning for governing Sudan.
Three eye witnesses who had been inside the Friendship Hall in Khartoum, all of whom asked not to be named, confirmed the incident to Reuters. They said the man was in his late 40s or early 50s, was dressed smartly and said nothing, Reuters informs.
The Umma National Party has announced today that it is in the process of filing the nomination form for the party's leader Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi who was also the last democratically elected prime minister in 1986 before being overthrown three years later in a bloodless coup.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has also nominated its spokesperson Hatem Al-Sir ending speculations on endorsing Bashir as some reports have mentioned.
This month the official Egyptian Middle East News Agency (MENA) had quoted DUP sources as saying that the party leader Mohamed Osman Al-Mirghani intends to endorse president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir for presidency, SudanTribune informs.

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A seven-year-old boy has raised more than £60,000 to help survivors of the Haitian earthquake after seeing images of children being pulled alive from the rubble.
Charlie Simpson was so upset by the devastation wrought by the earthquake that he told his mother he wanted to do anything he could to help. The boy set out to raise £500 for Unicef's Haiti appeal by riding his bike five miles around his local park - but the schoolboy's efforts inspired hundreds of people online who donated a total of more than £60,000 in just one day.
Charlie, from Fulham, west London, said: ''I just think it was quite sad when I saw the pictures on the TV.'' He asked his mother Leonora to help him create a sponsorship form and added: ''We sent it out on to the web and it just went everywhere.''
Mrs Simpson said: ''He was really upset when he saw the pictures on the television and it was great to see him get motivated behind something as important as this and do something about it.''
Asked how he first got the idea after seeing the images from Haiti, she said: ''He actually burst into tears. He just sat on my lap, then we had about a chat about the things he could do, and how he could go about it.
''He decided to do the cycle ride and he made me do a sponsorship form for him and that was it. It suddenly took off.'' Mrs Simpson added: ''He really felt strongly about this and thought that something had to be done. But what started off as a little cycle round the park with his dad has turned into something a lot bigger than that and we can't believe it.
''I am extremely proud of our Charlie, he's done really well. He's worked hard and he's raised a phenomenal amount of money so we couldn't ask for anything more.''
All the donations from his JustGiving website will go to Unicef, which is leading emergency relief clusters on water, sanitation, education and nutrition as well as supporting child protection.
Michael Newsome, the charity's Haiti Appeal director, said: ''Charlie's done this all by himself. It's always heart-warming when any child starts to respond and there's something quiet special about a child in the UK reaching out to the children of Haiti. Children in Haiti are by far the most vulnerable in a situation like this.
''It's quite fabulous when a child like Charlie, and all of the other children who are sponsoring him and doing things, are saying they want to get involved and make a difference.''
A Unicef spokeswoman added that the one idea had snowballed to make ''a huge difference''. ''He's helping to provide water to hundreds of thousands of people in Haiti,'' she said.
''We're all overwhelmed with the response to Charlie's bike ride. We've never known anything like it. We've never had anyone raise £60,000 in one day for us before. Charlie himself is just a wonderful boy, kind and generous, and really shows the nation how easy it is to help.''

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